NYC Public School Parents: The curious case of John White, Louisiana, Gates Foundation & inBloom: FOILed emails reveal clues to his involvement & decision to pull out

NYC Public School Parents: The curious case of John White, Louisiana, Gates Foundation & inBloom: FOILed emails reveal clues to his involvement & decision to pull out:

The curious case of John White, Louisiana, Gates Foundation & inBloom: FOILed emails reveal clues to his involvement & decision to pull out

Superintendent John White (credit: Shreveport Times)

Thanks to the inspired digging of bloggers like Jason France of Crazy Crawfishand Tom Aswell of Louisiana Voice, parent and student activists like Deborah and Rachael Sachs, and the FOILed emails obtained by Aswell and activist Lee Barrios, we now have a better picture about how John White, newly appointed Louisiana state Superintendent, went from knowing nothing in January 2012 about the student data-sharing project called the Shared Learning Collaborative, that soon morphed into inBloom Inc., to having decided to share the entire state’s student data less than a year later.

Then a mere four months after the decision was made to become a “Phase I” inBloom state, White suddenly announced he was withdrawing from the project, after parents and state board members had erupted in protest about the plan’s violation of student privacy.   How did this happen?  Some clues can be found below.

April 26, 2011:  Paul Pastorek, State Superintendent of Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), appoints John White as head of the Recovery School District (RSD).  White is the former NYC Deputy Chancellor, controversial for his support for closing public schools and installing charter schools in their place.  Pastorek instead cites White’s “collaborative” work “with principals and teachers to design a teacher effectiveness program in New York City that effectively supports and evaluates their achievement.”

June 2011: The Gates Foundation gives the